Do Wind Turbines Really Kill Birds?

Though this article is about the impact on wildlife, is there any good info on the potential health impact of wind turbines when in proximity to residential areas. Local developers are looking, literally, in my back yard. I fully support alternate energy and am not averse to the visual aspect of having wind turbines around, but find conflicting information about whether having these machines nearby will impact the health of my family. Of course, the industry indicates there is no risk to human health, but at least one researcher suggests that there is. Not knowing what affiliations the researcher(s) have makes me somewhat suspicious of there research.

Wind Machines can effectively alert Bats and birds, the bats are more affected than birds during migration periods, using electronic 2mHz beacons transmitter signals.

The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.

The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power across small regions.

Bats are easily intrigued with the turbine blade turbulence.
Usually the death toll remains about 4.5 (extrapolated from 1.5 in studies)
per annum, and that is mainly migrating bats.
The solution is not that complicated and is outlined in an excellent article
from the UK.

don hall, pmp, six sigma black belt
director
bearcreekresearch
859-523-3038

Wind Turbines vs. Bats (More affected than birds)
Bat activity was significantly reduced in habitats exposed to an EMF strength of greater than 2 v/m when compared to matched sites registering EMF levels of zero. The reduction in bat activity was not significantly different at lower levels of EMF strength within 400 m of the radar. There, increase EMF fields around wind turbines and reduce the problem! Info via PLoS ONE. 2007; 2(3): e297.Published online 2007 March 14. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000297. PMCID: PMC1808427Copyright Nicholls, Racey. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom

Simple and effective. Send in your million dollar study grants to me and I will build your windmill site for you.

thanks,

don hall
http://drhprojectconsulting.vpweb.com

I don't trust anyone's statistics. With at least a 10-1 discrepancy, it means know one knows anything, and these made-up numbers are advertised to sway opinion. Wind energy, sun energy, etc are stop-gap solutions because they are not constant. To be useful, they have to be coupled with battery systems that will increase the overall cost, making alternative energy cost-prohibitive. Carbon footprint is a custom-made Hollywood number being used to magically make fossil fuel electricity more expensive to justify the expense of non-fuel systems.

Obviously wind generators have environmental impact. There could be the possibility that some birds will fall victim to wind generators. There isn't any way to ensure no animals will be affected. The environmentalists will oppose any new human development. There isn't anything you can do to satisfy them so don't waste your time trying.

It just slayes me as to why when something new is developed we have to spend millions of dollors to do a study to see if it does something to harm the enviroment. Birds are not that stupid. They can fly millions of miles and come back to the place they were hatched. I think they can glide around a wind turbine.

If we would spend the millions of dollors on erecting more wind turbines and other ways to save money on our oil impact on this country maybe we would not be in the economical crunch we are in today.

The biggest threat from wind farm development that I see in the Northeast in habitat fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation was always considered one of the biggest threats to wildlife. Maintaining large unfragmented areas and linking habitat is critical for helping wildlife cope with climate change. Renewable energy facilities must not be allowed to further fragment habitat. Careful siting is critical.

I live near and travel thru the Altamont pass three times a week. This is not difficult to understand that the horizontal (propeller) wind generators cut thru the air currents. Therefore they cut what is in the current. It is an interesting site to see the cattle that graze there will not walk, eat or stand under an active generator because of vibrations.

All this could be solved with vertical wind turbines. The birds could ride the air current thru the turbine there is no vibrations and you can more per acre. A big plus is they generate power at lower wind speed, with no vibration.